Chapter 12. Types of Experience by Content

The claim that the fun of games is challenge is only half true—and only for gamers.

In the previous chapter, we examined the state in which users arrive and decided what to defer on the first screen. Once those things are deferred, the first screen becomes empty. What should we give first in that empty space? To answer, we must first know what we can give.

Ask “What should we give?” in a planning meeting, and the answer is usually a list of features: collection, conversation, combat, customization, rankings. Adding more features seems to increase how much we can give. But a feature list and an experience list are not the same. Adding a collection feature does not automatically create the pleasure of collecting, and adding conversation does not automatically create intimacy. A feature is only a passage. What the user actually undergoes through that passage is the experience.

Before designing the first experience, therefore, we must rebuild the list around experiences rather than features. Chapter 13 will deal with how to translate those experiences into buttons and presentations on the screen. Here, we first assemble the list of experiences we can give. Into what types can the experiences people have through content be divided?

People Open the Same Game to Do Different Things

Enter an imaginary character game. Suppose three people install the same game. The first screen is the same, and what the game can give is the same, yet their reasons for opening it are entirely different.

The first person installed it because the characters are beautiful. They enjoy each moment of seeing and touching a character and drawing out a response. Smooth movement and lively sound are enough to satisfy them. The second installed it to collect characters. They want the feeling of filling empty slots in a catalog and watching what they own increase; filling the spaces one by one is their pleasure. The third installed it because a friend plays. They are not very interested in either characters or collecting. Their purpose is to do something together, show what they customized, and receive a response. Real people are not divided this neatly, of course. Even the third person who followed a friend may grow attached to the empty slots in the catalog after spending time inside. But at least at the moment they stand before the first screen, the three have come to do different things.

Give all three the same first screen in the same way, and it misses the mark for at least two of them. Show only a long sensory presentation to the person who came to collect, and they ask, “So where do I collect things?” Give only solitary collecting to the person who came to show, and they ask, “Is there nothing we do together?” People want to pay for different experiences. Offer only one kind, and the rest feel that it is not for them and leave.

When teams construct a first screen, pleasures without challenge are often cut first. The tactile satisfaction of collecting, the pleasure of customization, and the feeling of connecting with a character are all deferred as “something for later,” leaving only the challenge of the first round. Yet the three pleasures removed in this way may have been exactly what the people we meant to bring wanted.

Successful content lays these different paths together on one island. Look at Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons. People open the same game to do different things. One spends time decorating the island and arranging furniture. Another devotes themselves to filling the museum's insect, fish, and fossil exhibits. Another becomes absorbed in showing friends their home and island and visiting one another, though the details vary by version and update. Because the same content layers the tactile pleasure of decorating, the ownership of filling things in, and the display of showing them to others on one island, people arriving by any path can find a place. Remember, however, that all these paths are not spread across the first screen at once. What exists throughout the whole game and what is offered in the first thirty minutes are different questions. We will return to this distinction in the chapter's conclusion.

The same applies to MEJE Aidong World. Before the same screen for customizing the dog Aidong, one fan enjoys the tactile act of applying color and changing shapes, another enjoys owning the completed Aidong as “mine,” and another enjoys displaying the customized Aidong to others. Aidong World therefore carries three experiences through customization: the tactile pleasure of making, the ownership of completing and having, and the display of showing. Only by recognizing that several experiences overlap within one piece of content can we avoid missing the mark for any fan.

Unfolding Experience into Ten Types

If experience remains vague, it is crushed into the single word “fun.” We therefore divide the experiences people have through content into ten types and use them as a tool. To choose what to give first in an initial experience, we must first call the things we can give by distinct names.

Sensation and discovery are pleasures that reach the body in the moment. Sensation is the pleasure of seeing, hearing, and touching: the screen moves smoothly, sound is lively, and pressing brings a response to the fingertip. Rhythm games and simple touch play mainly sell this experience, which ends in itself with nothing to understand or collect. Discovery is the pleasure of finding what is hidden and meeting the unexpected: the taste of exploration that comes from examining a corner, encountering a surprise, and taking one more step without knowing what will appear next.

Understanding, choice, and achievement are experiences of the mind and hand. Understanding is the pleasure of working out what was unknown and resolving what would not yield. It includes the puzzle pleasure of thinking through a move and exclaiming “Aha!” when it fits. Choice is the sense of control that comes from deciding with one's own hand which path to take and whose side to join. Even with the same outcome, something decided by another person feels different from something I chose. Achievement is the feeling of crossing a wall that once stopped me, becoming better than yesterday, and accomplishing something difficult. This is the experience games sell most often; challenge and overcoming belong here.

Ownership, world, and ritual are experiences of having and dwelling. Ownership is the feeling that what is mine increases as I collect, fill, and possess. It includes the pleasure of collecting, the satisfaction of completing a catalog, and attachment to my character as mine. World is the feeling of having entered another place and possessing an identity as someone within its story and atmosphere. It is the experience of dwelling inside that world as one becomes immersed in a drama. Ritual is the stability found in repeated procedures: the rhythm of visiting at the same time and doing the same thing each day settling into ordinary life.

Relationship and display are experiences that connect through people. Relationship is the feeling of reaching and connecting with someone. A character recognizes me, grows more attached when we meet often, and misses me when I am away. Whether between people or between a person and a character, it is the experience of feelings moving back and forth. Display is the feeling of being seen and acknowledged by others. It touches the desire to reveal what I have customized, collected, and achieved and receive a response.

The point is not to memorize these ten. It is to give us one-word names for what our content gives users. Once we can say “This gives an ownership experience” rather than “It has a collection feature,” the questions of who wants that experience and whether to offer or defer it on the first screen follow naturally.

“Fun Is Only Challenge and Achievement”: Gamers' Common Sense

Since this chapter concerns experience, let us bring one game convention to the checkpoint. It is less a convention than common sense engraved deep in gamers' minds: the belief that the fun of games ultimately lies in challenge and achievement.

To a gamer, games are about overcoming. They believe the essence of games is the pleasure of defeating a difficult enemy, clearing a stage that would not yield, and climbing higher. This belief has grounds. Well-made games have refined that pleasure for a long time, and gamers play because they know its taste. Challenge and achievement are real experiences, and when well designed, they are powerful.

This common sense becomes dangerous when treated as the only fun games can offer. Many newcomers did not come to be challenged. Someone who was reading a webtoon came because they wondered what happened next; they want world and relationship, not overcoming. Someone who came because they liked a character wants that character in their possession and by their side; they want ownership and relationship. Someone who followed a friend wants to play together and show things; they want display and relationship. Put a first screen before them that says, “Prove your skill with a difficult challenge from the first round,” and gamers may be thrilled, but everyone else feels that this is not their place.

The price this common sense makes ordinary people pay is the experience of failure and a sense of exclusion. A challenge-centered first screen welcomes only skilled people. Those who lack skill lose their first round, confirm “Games really aren't for me,” and leave. Force challenge on someone who never wanted it, and they feel they have come to the wrong place. This does not mean discarding challenge and achievement. Calculate them using the costs from the previous chapter, and the conclusion becomes simpler: among the ten experiences, challenge is the most expensive product on the first screen. It can be sold only after charging the cost of failure and the burden of wounded pride. Sensation, by contrast, is almost free. Seeing, hearing, and touching carry almost no bill. Challenge is not bad; it is simply too expensive a product to place at the first checkout counter. Expensive products are recommended after customers have learned to trust the store. The first screen must give the experience wanted by the people we intend to bring: ownership to those who came to collect, world to those who came for a story, display to those who came to show. Offer challenge later to those who want it, or to those who have stayed long enough through other experiences. Thinking that games can provide only challenge confines games to gamers alone.

Different Origins Want Different Experiences

Chapters 9 and 10 converge again here. The people we decided to bring do not arrive empty-handed. They carry tastes in experience cultivated where they used to live, and those tastes determine which experience they first want to pay for on our first screen.

People from drama and film want narrative and world. Their first screen should be the entrance to a story: what is happening in this world, and who am I within it? Put controls or challenge first, and they feel, “But I came to watch.” People from commerce—those accustomed to shopping and collecting—want ownership. Their interest lies in what they can have and how what is theirs can increase, so it matters that they quickly acquire one thing that is “mine” on the first screen. People accustomed to endlessly swiping short-form media want immediate, brief, tactile sensation. Ask for long narration or complex understanding, and their finger leaves first. People from idol or character fandom want relationship and ownership: keeping a favorite by their side, asking how they are every day, and watching the relationship accumulate.

Trying to place every experience in one screen makes none of them clear to anyone. In the first experience, therefore, look at the origin of the people we are targeting first, choose the three experiences they want, and place them at the very front. If we decide to attract people from drama, give world and narrative first. If we decide to attract people from commerce, give ownership first. The remaining experiences are not removed but placed later. The first screen must speak the language of the people we targeted, and that language is the kind of experience they want.

The same logic also works in reverse. This book has repeatedly said to defer challenge and competition because its primary acquisition target comes from outside games. If the people we primarily intend to bring are gamers, however, the logic of origin says that challenge and collection competition should instead be placed first. If a sequel to a hardcore action game offers sensation and ritual first, its gamers feel that it has gone soft and leave. Deferral is not doctrine but a calculation that follows origin. The people we bring always decide what comes first.

▶ Three Questions to Apply to My Screen

Are we treating challenge as the only fun?

Does the first screen show the types of experience ordinary people came to find?

Is our core fun present on the first screen? If even one is misaligned, the screen calls only one gamer and sends everyone else away.

Therefore, Choose Three Experiences for the First Thirty Minutes

We can now set aside the question “Which features should we add?” Once the list is rebuilt around experiences, the only question left is “Which experiences should people undergo first?”

First, examine our content through the ten experiences it can provide. Choose the three most wanted by the people we aim to bring first, let them taste those clearly within the first thirty minutes, and defer rather than remove the other seven. If praising Animal Crossing above and now telling you to choose only three sounds contradictory, separate the time axes. Lay many experiences throughout the whole game as Animal Crossing does, but place only three on the display table of the first thirty minutes. Keep the other seven in storage and bring them onto the table one at a time after the user becomes a regular customer. Show all ten on the first screen, and users leave without knowing what the place is for. Make three clear, and at least the people who wanted those three feel, “There is a place for me here.”

There is one more criterion for choosing the three. As customization in Aidong World showed, a single feature can carry three experiences: the sensation of applying color, the ownership of having the result, and the display of showing it. The minimum unit of first-thirty-minute design is therefore experience, not feature. Lay the feature list and experience list across and down a matrix, and features that fill several experience cells become visible. Those are the highest priority for the first screen, because they occupy the same space and charge the same cost while carrying more experiences.

This decision leads to measurement. If we decided to give ownership first, examine the proportion of users who obtain something of “their own” within the first thirty minutes. If that proportion is low, the intended experience did not actually arrive. Each other type can also have a proxy measure. If we promised world, examine the proportion who watch narration and cutscenes through to the end—the inverse of the skip rate. If we promised relationship, examine the proportion who return to touch a character they have already met. Place side by side the experience we hung on the first screen and whether users actually reached it. The gap between what we promised and what we delivered appears in the numbers. Quantitative data illuminates the distance between the experience we meant to give and the one we actually gave.

Reference Content

Cases in other media that reveal the concepts of this chapter.

Video Games

Animal Crossing: New Horizons: in the same game, one person becomes absorbed in museum collecting, another in island decoration, and another in visiting friends. Multiple experiences overlap in one piece of content.
Disco Elysium: with no traditional combat at all, it proceeds entirely through checks using twenty-four skills, dialogue trees, and a Thought Cabinet filled with ideas in the protagonist's head. It shows that an RPG can stand on understanding, world, and choice alone.
Cookie Clicker / AdVenture Capitalist: the simple repetition of pressing to make a number rise becomes a rhythm of returning every day to check it. These are idle-game archetypes that hold people through ritual and ownership alone, without challenge or narrative.

Device UX / Consumer Electronics

Tamagotchi: feeding, cleaning, and checking every day create attachment to a sixteen-pixel creature—the “Tamagotchi effect.” It holds people through relationship and ritual, the daily check-in, without challenge.

General Apps / Fandom

K-pop fandom: around the same group, one person collects photo cards (ownership), another devotes themselves to streaming songs and buying albums, another attends concerts and fan meetings, and another creates fan content to spread the word. Ownership, relationship, and display overlap around one subject.

The remaining reference content is gathered in the “Chapter 12 Appendix” at the end of this chapter (collected as Appendix D in the printed volume).

Design Note ▶ Try It Yourself

Lay out beside our content the ten experiences it can provide: sensation, understanding, choice, achievement, ownership, relationship, world, ritual, display, and discovery. For each experience, write one line describing where our game provides it. Leave blank any experience the game has nowhere to provide.

Once the list is complete, think of the origin of the people we intend to bring first and identify which of the ten experiences they cultivated where they used to live. Circle that experience—world for people from drama, ownership for people from commerce, and so on.

Now choose three experiences for the first thirty minutes, including the circled ones. Construct the first-screen path so users taste those three within the first thirty minutes, and move all experiences outside the three into a “deferred” column. When constructing the path, put first the features that fill several experience cells. This work will grow into the experience-type table by content and the priority-experience list for the first thirty minutes in Appendix B.

If the chosen three do not include the fun wanted by the people you intend to bring, stop the hand that was about to fill the screen with challenge alone.

One-line summary: A feature list and an experience list are not the same. The experiences people have through content divide into ten types: sensation, understanding, choice, achievement, ownership, relationship, world, ritual, display, and discovery. People open the same game wanting different experiences, and those differences come from their origins. People from drama want world, people from commerce want ownership, and people from short-form media want sensation. The idea that the fun of games is only challenge and achievement is gamers' common sense, not a newcomer's expectation. Next chapter: Once we decide which experiences to give, we must determine how to reveal them on the screen. A heart button points to recognition; a reward popup points to achievement. Yet drawing an indicator does not create an experience. In the next chapter, we dissect the distance between what a button symbolizes and the actual experience.

Chapter 12 Appendix: Reference Content Collection

This collection brings together cases from many media to test two claims: a feature list and an experience list are not the same, and people's experiences through content divide into ten types—sensation, understanding, choice, achievement, ownership, relationship, world, ritual, display, and discovery—so people open the same content in pursuit of different experiences. The cases are grouped by medium, and each entry ends with an “Observation” describing what a designer should watch. There is one way to read them: count how many of the ten cells each piece of content fills, and which cells people enter through.

Video Games

Minecraft: in the same world, one person becomes absorbed in building, another in survival and exploration, and another in researching redstone circuits. Separate Creative and Survival modes formally recognize that split. Observation: choosing a mode is the question “Which experience did you come to undergo?”; examine what must be separated for one world to hold several experiences.
Stardew Valley: in this 2016 game, Grandpa's Evaluation in year three awards points in different cells, including total earnings, museum collection, skills, friendships with villagers, and restoration of the Community Center. Whether a player pursues only farming, collecting, or relationships, they can reach the same recognition. Observation: the evaluation system itself is a rare case of counting several experience types equally; examine which types our own evaluation table counts exclusively.
The Sims: home decoration (ownership), human relationships (relationship), and creating a life story (world and choice) divide a sandbox without a victory condition into as many experiences as there are people. Observation: when there is no victory condition, what each person came to do becomes most clearly visible.
Death Stranding: this 2019 game centers delivery and foregrounds asynchronous cooperation, in which roads, bridges, and zip-lines placed by one person are shared by others. It drives the game through connection (relationship), not combat (achievement). Observation: a game still works when the genre's default experience is removed and another type is cast as the lead.
EVE Online: in the space MMO running since 2003, mining, manufacturing and trade, exploration, piracy, and combat all function as professions. Combat is not the only means of contribution; the whole economy divides into different experiences for different people. Observation: when every experience type has its own profession, one world can admit several kinds of people at once.
Final Fantasy XIV: the same game has separate noncombat jobs, Disciples of the Hand (crafting) and Disciples of the Land (gathering). There is room for people who stay through crafting, gathering, housing, and glamour without fighting. Observation: examine a design that formalizes the place of noncombat players at the job-system level.
Pokémon GO: in this location-based game released in 2016, one person opens the app to complete the Pokédex and collect differently colored variants (ownership), another for raids and battles (achievement), and another for walking and gatherings (relationship and ritual). Observation: whether the overlapping experiences in one app are separated enough not to interfere with one another, and whether the first screen blocks entry through any experience.
Gran Turismo: racing (achievement) appears to be central, but beginning with GT Sport (2017), Scapes photo mode, livery, and tuning gave a separate group ways to customize cars (sensation and ownership), photograph them, and show them (display). Observation: even within the racing genre, experiences outside competition form a substantial layer.

Animated Film

Toy Story: the story centers relationship as different characters assign different meanings to the same toys. Its audience also divides between children who see adventure and adults who see friendship and loss. Observation: how to layer one screen so it arrives as a different experience depending on the viewer.
Spirited Away: children see the 2001 film as an adventure through the world of spirits (discovery and world), while adults read it as an allegory of labor, money, and growth (understanding). Observation: layering the same scene so it gives two audience groups different experience types at once.
Pixar's Inside Out / Up: children enjoy colorful adventures and characters (sensation and discovery), while adults receive the acceptance of sadness and the emotions of loss (world and understanding). Observation: a composition that keeps the two layers of experience from obscuring each other.

Literature

The Little Prince: children read the same text as an adventure across planets (discovery), while adults read the relationship and loss of taming and farewell. One book arrives as different experiences for different readers. Observation: the thickness of a text that gives each layer a different experience without excluding any readership.

Live-Action TV / Drama

Diverging motives for watching the same IP: one person watches for narrative, another for character relationships, and another for the accuracy of the world-building. Observation: viewing reactions and fan activities—clip edits, setting guides, character analysis—are free data showing the distribution of experience types.

Music

Different listening through the same playlist: on Spotify, one person lets the same set of songs play for concentration or background (sensation and ritual), another digs into it to discover new artists (discovery), and another shares a collaborative list they built together (relationship and display). Observation: one recording divides into several experiences according to how it is heard; one feature, playback, does not determine the experience.

Board Games

Catan: collecting resources (ownership), extending roads (achievement), and negotiation (relationship) overlap in one game, giving different pleasures to different people. Observation: overlapping experiences interlock rather than remain separate—you must negotiate to collect resources.
Descent / Gloomhaven: achievement-oriented combat players and story-oriented players coexist at the same table. Observation: even people playing together under the same rules undergo different experiences; one table is an intersection of many experiences.

Theme Parks / Spatial Experiences

Disneyland: in the same park, one person buys the achievement of riding attractions, another a relationship with characters, and another time spent dwelling in atmosphere and world. Observation: a single admission ticket becomes a ticket to different experiences for different people, and the circulation routes are designed not to block those divisions.

General Apps / Fandom

Instagram: one person opens the same app for display (curating a feed), another for relationship (messages), and another for discovery (Explore). Observation: each bottom tab is effectively divided into an entrance for an experience type.
LEGO / LEGO building apps: the tactile pleasure of making (sensation), ownership of the finished object, and exhibition and display all fit inside one activity. Observation: the feature is only “assembly,” yet it carries three experiences; it is a model of one feature filling several experience cells.
YouTube: one person opens the same app to learn through lectures and documentaries (understanding), another to see updates from subscribed channels (relationship), another for background sound before sleep (sensation and ritual), and another for an unexpected video brought by the algorithm (discovery). Observation: the first screen, the Home feed, is assembled as a different experience entrance for each person; identify whose entrance our first screen is.
Strava: although it records running and cycling, one GPS-recording feature overlaps personal records (achievement), exploring new routes (discovery), segment rankings and Kudos (display and relationship), and exercise at the same time every day (ritual). Observation: a model of one feature filling several experience cells, and a criterion for choosing which feature to put first in the first thirty minutes.

Offline / Everyday Life

Watching baseball at the stadium: one person watches the same game through strategy and statistics (understanding), another enjoys the atmosphere of chants and food (sensation and ritual), another treats it as time with companions (relationship), and another collects uniforms and merchandise (ownership and display). Observation: one piece of content, the game, divides into several experiences in the stands; the assumption that “fun is competition” is only half true even at the ballpark.
Hiking: one person climbs the same mountain to certify reaching the summit (achievement and display), another for scenery and air (sensation), another to talk with a companion (relationship), and another as a rhythm of walking the same route every week (ritual). Observation: the content, the mountain, is one, yet there are as many reasons to climb as people, and the entrance tells none of them they are wrong.
Book clubs: the same book is an experience of understanding and world when read alone, relationship when discussed together, and display through reviews and proof of reading. Observation: activities around content, rather than the content alone, change the experience type; consider which layers of activity can surround our game.